industry & policy
says she no longer needs that. She also says joint replacement
is not even on the horizon for her anymore. There can be some
good results [from exercise and diet]. It’s not for everyone, but in
a lot of cases, it can be greatly beneficial.
From now until the federal election, Arthritis Australia is
running its ‘Speak Up For Arthritis’ campaign, to lobby for
better programs to support people with arthritis. What is this
campaign’s focus?
What have consumers told Arthritis Australia about
non-surgical management options?
One of the stories we do hear is that few people are offered nonsurgical management. For example, we know that in New South
Wales, about two-thirds of the people on the waiting list for a
joint replacement have never been advised that they could lose
weight and do specific arthritis-appropriate exercises to help them
manage their condition. They’ve been told, ‘No. Do not pass go.
Go straight to surgery.’ We are conscious that for most people,
they don’t get that advice and support they need to help manage
the condition along the way.
Others have been offered that, and obviously it’s going to
vary for different people, but there have been some fabulous
success stories. For example, there’s a lady named Ann Ashford,
who’s based in Sydney, and she was due for a double-knee
replacement. She was a bit scared because it’s a huge, invasive
procedure, and very expensive. She thought she’d try losing a
bit of weight and exercising on the basis of some advice she
received, and four years later, she says she’s feeling better than
she ever has before. She had been relying on a walking stick but
The campaign is focusing on three main issues. The first is getting
better non-surgical management for people with osteoarthritis,
so people are encouraged to [address] their condition actively –
from diagnosis and as the osteoarthritis progresses.
The second thing we are focusing on is for people with
inflammatory arthritis. Arthritis is an umbrella term for more
than 100 different conditions that affect the joints. Some forms
of arthritis, such as rheumatoid arthritis or juvenile arthritis, are
autoimmune conditions and they can happen at any age. They
require specialist care, but there are not enough specialists to go
around. We want to see the specialist nurse workforce built up
to help people with those forms of arthritis learn to manage their
condition, and to provide co-ordinated care for people.
The third aspect is arthritis research. Even though arthritis is
one of the most common and costly and disabling conditions
in Australia, it receives little research funding relative to other
comparable conditions. We feel that unless we invest in that
research, we won’t be able to find better ways to manage
arthritis, and we won’t to be able to find a cure for the many
different forms of it. Just as an example, juvenile arthritis
affects 6000 children under the age of 16, yet there has been
no allocation of research funding for it from the government.
In contrast, juvenile diabetes, which is a comparably severe
disease and affects the same number of children, gets $7
million a year in research funding. There’s a need to raise
awareness about these issues.
We’re encouraging people who have arthritis, or know
someone with arthritis, to contact their local MP. We’ve set up a
campaign webpage that makes it easy for them to do that. It’s at
speakupforarthitis.org.au
We’d appreciate it if [anyone living with arthritis] could go along
to that page, tell your local MP what it’s like to live with your
condition, and ask them to commit to better programs of care,
because unless we start to speak up, arthritis will continue to be an
overlooked, chronic condition. ■
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